Memorial Day can bring tears to my eyes. A news story in this Monday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Honor the Fallen by Being People of Character, ends with, “Help us to honor our loved ones by bringing their model of character to your own lives. Act with courage, integrity, leadership, and service…. Aim for more than OK.”

More than anything, I want our work with recovery of resources from biosolids to “Aim for more than OK.” “Cheap and easy” is not the test of good biosolids management, and my belief is that our profession has been for a while now on the high road. But we all, as humans, tend to ignore evidence that is contrary to our beliefs -- just go back to this great article from two years ago, “We are all confident idiots.”

Integrity includes listening to our critics. We have a few familiar biosolids opponents, commenting on local news controversies, and who are out there deploying the “sludge activists toolkits” (see “sludgefacts.org”). We occasionally have the newly-awakened gadfly, for example resurrecting long-ago discredited, ex-EPAer David Lewis (see Mother Earth News article). But what about those with apparently greater credibility, those who have published in peer-reviewed science journals?

Virginia government has contributed to our understanding of health risk risks of biosolids. It directed the synthesis of a substantial body of research through a team of epidemiologists that produced a thoughtful and balanced report, “Health Effects of Biosolids Applied to Land: Available Scientific Evidence,” dealing with concerns of biosolids-borne chemicals, pathogens, and radioactivity and their effect on human health was reviewed objectively. Biosolids was given a pretty good bill of health, but the report called for continuing a research agenda: “biosolids related health complaints should be investigated and documented so that trends or other indications of adverse health effects can be recognized and investigated in a timely manner by trained epidemiologists”. This past Spring, the Virginia legislature called for an update of this report, a decade later, to explore where the science has taken us, and to update it by looking at other residuals and at the cost of achieving Class A standards for pathogen reduction. We can look for results perhaps in 2018.

We have Doctor Rufus Chaney, soon to retire from the USDA ARS, coming to the MABA Summer Technical Symposium in Baltimore, July 19th and 20th. His presentation will argue “The Science of biosolids metals and xenobiotics show the importance of the matrix of biosolids, and the equilibration of metals and xenobiotics within biosolids before land application.” Yet, even so, Dr. Chaney urges us onward with “… it remains important for the POTW community to support and conduct long term field research on beneficial use of biosolids both to address new questions, and to confirm the long term protections predicted from the few decades of field research available today.”

The work of Dr. Chaney has contributed enormously to our understanding of how the use of biosolids effects soil quality. His amazing oeuvre of science publications is joined by those of so many other well-published scientists. Dr. Chaney is telling us his retirement in no way is an excuse to end science’s inquiry. Our integrity as environmental stewards obligates us to continue the scholarship.

Later this week I will be posting the Biosolids Research Update for June from Dr. Sally Brown. The topic is soil health. This for me is the bottom line for resource recovery from biosolids. We have a substantial body of work that shows that biosolids benefits are more than just OK. The January 2016 issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality was devoted to papers from the Soil in the City conference in Chicago in July 2015. The work at Virginia Tech by Dr. Xunzhong Zhang on bio-stimulants has shown growth stimulation from biosolids and protection from drought (see Impact of Biosolids on Hormone Metabolism in Drought-Stressed Tall Fescue). Dr. Greg Evanylo is extending his three decades of work with biosolids effects with some specific new biosolids-based soil blends using DC Water’s new biosolids product BLOOM, with the great tagline, “Good Soil, Better Earth.”

These are all evidence that we are willing to go beyond just OK. I’m OK, You’re OK, But Biosolids is More Than OK.